Coming Home Alone
by Blablover5
Summary: Big Ol Spoilers - This is set right after the Sole Survivor discovers what happened to Shaun so don't read unless you're at that point in the game. It was such a huge emotional impact, I thought there needed to be a scene of her talking to someone about the implications. Hancock romance.


For once silence pervaded the streets of Sanctuary Hills. Only the sound of her turrets clunking through the dark air greeted her as she stepped across the bridge. Night hugged the horizon, refusing to recuse its hold on the world for a few more hours. She'd walk through the endless darkness, only noting the occasional danger always lurking in the wasteland, her mind refusing to think beyond the basic instincts of survival. But now that she returned to home...

God, was that what this was?

Home?

A body moved underneath the gutted houses, boots clipping across shattered concrete poured when the world held promise, hope. The only floodlight she'd managed to scrounge up lit upon the shadow illuminating the frock coat as out of time as her. Hancock. When she last saw him he'd been standing guard outside the teleport gadget they'd whipped up, snarking about the chances it'd blast her to dust. But on occasion he'd glance back, his trademark smirk dipping low in concern.

"Hey," he called, pausing before her, his skinny form in silhouette, "you're back. We were starting to get worried, the dog in particular. He was carrying on something awful, though I bet it was all a play for more treats. And look at you, in nearly one piece."

"Yep," she answered, continuing her measured walk down the street. Hancock fell in step behind her, awkwardly shifting even further away than usual. Her gait wobbled from the mirelurk blood festering into the wounds across her skin. She should have stopped to clean them out but stopping meant thinking.

"So...did you find the Institute?"

"Yep," she answered again. Her battered fingers, coated in dried blood and muck, dug deep into her gun.

"Okay, okay." Hancock trailed behind her into the blue house, the only one she hadn't ripped apart and rebuilt for settlers filling up Sanctuary Hills. Her house. "Good, I mean I'm ecstatic to see you in one piece. MacCready was talking some shit about how...how..."

The gun slipped from her hands and clattered onto the counter. Without ceremony, she stripped off her nest of frag grenades and laid it atop the other armor pieces she'd ripped from enemies all in a fool hearty attempt to stay alive long enough to find her boy. What did it matter now?

Hancock's fingers touched the tip of her elbow, drawing her attention to him. "Did you...I, do you want to be alone?"

She shook her head, unable to voice a word. Her shoulders sagged from an impenetrable weight she didn't even realize she'd been carrying.

"Okay, I can stay, no problem. Just..." Hancock sighed, his black eyes slipping up to the rotted ceiling. He couldn't face her while he asked the permeating question, "did you find your kid?"

A cruel laugh gurgled in her throat as she gasped out one more, "Yep." The ghoul's eyes narrowed in confusion, but she broke away from him and paced down the hallway. She'd thrown herself into stripping Sanctuary Hills for parts after climbing out of the vault. The distraction aided in the healing she deluded herself into thinking she finished. The work kept her too exhausted to churn over every horrifying facet of her new life while clinging to a filthy mattress stitched together from someone's living room rugs. But through all the salvage, the days of machining apart car frames and chopping up old logs, she never once made it down this hall. Now she walked with purpose, the ghosts that haunted her steps across the wasteland that was once her home finally made real.

Hancock followed close behind, perhaps aware of her self imposed exile. No one else came into this house, not even Strong. She'd never voiced a word against it, but they all seemed to sense something wrong about that little blue house in the middle of the street. Her fingers trailed along the chewed apart walls as if none of this had happened and she'd turn into their second bedroom to find Shaun tucked up in his crib for a nap. Only the light of the moon and a radioactive haze from the creek illuminated what remained of the crib they spent hours picking from an endless choice at the store. It had to be sturdy but safe; Nate devoted hours of his life to reading over every damn safety rating and review they could find.

"I found Shaun," she spoke, her voice ragged. Pain seized across her lip from where the mirelurk split it, but she couldn't stop the tide of words now. "Even after the memories from Kellogg I thought, I hoped, that he was wrong. That he somehow lied, or was manipulated, and Shaun was still a baby..."

She slipped into the room, her arms wrapped tight around her body for fear of disturbing the memorial. If scavengers ever moved through here they left so much untouched; even a few of the blocks Shaun never used sat upon the decrepit rug. Her boot thudded into the dresser leg, rattling the rotted remains. Something on top of it crumbled, skittering across the moonlight streaking through exposed window frames.

While reaching down to pick it up, she spoke, "We read every damn book they wrote on parenting. Nate hated it, said I was being too literal in the advice and it was best to just wing it. 'Kids didn't come with instruction books.' But...oh god," she sucked back a wave of emotion before continuing, "that was what I knew. Procedure. Precedent. I was terrified I'd be the worst mother ever and if I just reviewed previous case studies I'd be okay." Her fingers wrapped around Shaun's baby book, the first one he ever received from her mother. He wasn't even old enough to see it before the whole world exploded. "None of it fucking mattered," she hissed, fingers digging deeper into the tender cardboard. "They took him from me, they took it all from me!"

She didn't realize she'd fallen to her knees until she felt Hancock's hand upon her shoulder. He didn't speak, only gave a reassuring squeeze as she stared at the no longer bright and happy pastel colors. All life had been drained from the cover by the passage of time. "I didn't find my infant son in the Institute. I didn't even find a ten year old boy I could at least, maybe, continue to raise. To love. No..." Tears held back from the moment that man stepped through the door and spoke that code finally broke, "His first step, first word, first skinned knee, first time he cried out for mommy...They stole it all. Sixty years! My own son is sixty years old." A hard laugh curdled around her words, "The books never said anything about that."

"Shit," Hancock cursed, his knotted fingers digging deeper into her shoulders from the outburst.

"Yeah, shit. It's all shit. Every last god damn thing in this fucked up world. My baby taken while I watched, and all this time scrabbling across the Commonwealth for that? I never even got to...God, this isn't helping," she muttered, restraining herself through the wash of tears.

"Hey, don't go pulling back on my account," Hancock interrupted her. He dropped to his own knee on her left, half of his face illuminated from the moon's glint. She tried to wipe the never ending cascade off her face, but nothing seemed to be working. Softly, the ghoul rubbed his own scarred hand across her cheek and cupped her jaw. "That's a lot of shit for anyone to handle. Most people would have laid down and died the second they got out of the freezer. But you kept going, every day, every bullet wound, you got up, brushed yourself off, and trekked through the wasteland for answers."

"I don't need to be patronized," she said, trying to look away.

"Good, because I ain't. It's damn impressive any way you look at it. And breaking down, under all that, it happens. To everyone. We're not just robots that can switch off all the bad shit at a moments notice. Well, maybe Nick can. Damn, never envied a synth before."

"Ha," she choked on the implications in his words he wasn't even aware of. But why shouldn't he be? Out of everyone who took up her cause, shared her road, somehow the ghoul came the closest to touching the piece of her that should have died two centuries ago. "You should know, that there's more, so much worse than them turning Shaun into, taking away his life with me. He...God, he's in charge of the Institute."

"What?"

"They raised him, needed a...a human with pure DNA uncorrupted by radiation to create all the synths. He's a part of every single synth and I guess, so am I. Now he's called Father. I guess he was probably never called Shaun. They wouldn't have known his real name."

"Your kid's the one behind all the abductions, taking people in the middle of the night, setting us against each other for some little game of their?" Hancock's rasping voice drifted closer to the grave than usual. His hand remained in place, but she felt his body shift away from her - perhaps subconsciously.

Her head fell down to her chest. She'd berated herself for the same judgment lurking in Hancock's black eyes. How could her son, her baby boy be hurting so many people? It cut to the quick to stare into the same eyes as her husband and see only sneering indifference to the troubles of the Commonwealth. He'd abandoned the people long ago and cared only for furthering his own kind. She wasn't sure what his kind even were.

"He used me, watched me struggle across the Commonwealth, needed me to kill Kellogg, or wanted me to. I don't know. But, god, if the roles were reversed and I knew my son was searching for me I'd rend the earth to find him. And he, Father, just sat back, wondering if I'd survive." She shook her head at the absurd thought bubbling to the surface, "I'm not sure what it says about nature vs nurture, but I'd never in a couple hundred years thought my own flesh and blood was capable of..." her musing stuttered to a halt. She wasn't able to face the ghoul that her own son wished to rid the world of; instead, she watched her fingers still sliding along the rough edge of the baby book, wearing it away.

"That's a...well, fuck," Hancock stumbled around something to say, but there was nothing. All she heard in that sterile and alien world were platitudes as firm as a soap bubble. 'Oh, you are Father's mother. You must be so proud!' Somewhere under it all was an overarching stratagem but she got only the bare minimum. She was now the ignorant child while her son kept all he could from her - as if she was a rat running his maze. But, but even though it all he was still her son. The book dropped from her hands as she reached out, grabbing onto Hancock's coat. A frenzied panic, perhaps from a rise in maternal instincts, flooded her veins. She yanked him towards her, determination sneering her words.

"You cannot tell the others about this. What they would do to my son if they knew! If you tell anyone about him, I would have to- Not yet, not...please, I," her body folded, exhaustion and embarrassment yanking away the powerful threat as soon as it rose in her gullet. She felt like a fool. "I'm so sorry," she gurgled still cling to his coat but not to threaten him, only to try and keep herself upright, "I don't mean to...he's my boy. I just keep hoping that-" Rather than throw her hands off him, Hancock reached over and wrapped his arms across the back of her shoulders. She crumbled into her first hug since she walked out of the freezer and into this new world. His bony frame prodded up even through the layers of the old costume, only scraps of muscle cushioning the side of her face.

"It's all right," he whispered. Despite playing the cad, he kept his hands tight against her back, his mouth pressed near her forehead. "I didn't plan on blabbing to anyone. This is your...Whatever comes, I know you'll do the right thing."

"How?" Never was she more uncertain in her own life than when Shaun sat her down on that couch and the damn Institute ripped apart her world for a second time.

Hancock smiled, his lipless mouth twisted in a sad smirk, "Because you always do."

"Shaun wants me to work with him, to live in his Institute helping to bring back in synths."

"Does he know you've been doing the exact opposite with the railroad?"

She pursed her lips. He'd known about her killing Kellogg, and that she was working so hard to find him. Spies must be watching her, who knew how many were out there. More than likely he knew of the railroad, even of her involvement with the brotherhood. Did he know about her befriending a super mutant or that she found herself growing closer to a ghoul? How well would that play in the Institute?

Hancock watched her, pulling back to try and catch her eye, "What are you gonna do?"

And that was what dogged her every step, it was why she had the Institute teleport her miles away from Sanctuary Hills. The mirelurk nest had been an accident, but even as she shot her way through the monsters the war created, the question rattled in her brain. "I just wanted to find my son, to bring him back to me, to find somewhere safe I could settle down and raise him."

"Safe, huh? Not many options out here for that. You could moved in with Nick at Diamond City. Make it a detective, detective, and son business," Hancock quipped.

She reached up, her fingers threading up the ruffles of his shirt to softly trill against his jawline. For a moment, his eyes blinked rapidly but he didn't jerk back from the touch. "Goodneighbor seems a nice place, too. Some shifty shroud character keeps the streets clean and I get on rather well with the mayor."

Hancock snorted, "Sure, but the school system's shit."

"No place is perfect," she joked through gritted teeth. That life, whatever scraps she'd dared to dream of, burst into ash in that pristine hospital. It played the part of utopia but that only drilled through her nerves more.

Hancock's hold slipped and he jerked his head towards the window, "Sun's coming up." Sure enough, a hazy lightning of the horizon broke against the window frame. "Everyone'll be wanting to know you're back and...you know, safe. Plus, I heard Strong's trying cooking again."

"God, he's not just throwing whole dead mole rats into the fire, is he? I couldn't get that smell out of my nose for three days."

"Hey, those mole rats are full of vitamins, and minerals, and forks they ate," Hancock dropped his arms from around her and staggered up to stand. He offered a hand to her, which she accepted. The blood that pooled in her knees rushed to her feet, causing her to stagger from the pins and needles. "What rad addled brain convinces something to eat a fork?"

"I've found the same on ferals before," she said.

"If I ever start eyeing up the silverware, might want to keep your distance and reload." He tried to pass it off as a silly joke, but the idea stung deep, deeper than she anticipated.

A minor quake rattled the remaining screws in the walls. They shared a look before a voice shouted along with the steps breaking the concrete outside, "Strong is well! It morning!"

Hancock only shrugged, "He's been learning guarding from Preston."

"Shit," she smiled, shaking her head at the idea. "Hey, Hancock."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks, for...hearing me out."

He cocked his grin up sticking out a hip, "Only seemed fair, you're always listening to us blubber on."

Her hand grazed across his shoulder, "I will decide what to do about the Institute, about Shaun. I just..."

"Yeah, I get it. Family's not," he sighed, a grumble rolling through his words, "it ain't easy to spit in its face." He patted her hand before turning to leave the room. Midway out the door, he shouted to the super mutant, "Hey, buddy! Whatcha cooking up this time?"

"Strong learn new recipe! Make fried mirelurk! Cooking in shells now!"

Her eyes gazed afresh around the room. She never voiced her plans to clean it up, prepare it for Shaun. Every time she even thought it, the dark part of her brain threatened that there was an even likelier chance she'd never find him. And now that she had...

Bending over, she scooped up the baby book and held it tightly while eyeing up every scrap of metal and wood she could finally eek out of the room. A whole new turret and parts of a generator could be built from what was supposed to be her life. Holding the last remnant of her child tightly, she left the house that was no longer hers. What awaited her was a lot of unknowns in a world she was still running to understand. Luckily, she had a lot of help getting there.


End file.
